10 Movies And Shows You Probably Didn’t Know Geoge Clooney Appeared In 

Long before he became famous on ER, Clooney played George Burnett on 17 episodes of The Facts Of Life.

In the show, Clooney’s character is a local carpenter and contractor. Burnett quickly becomes friends with the show’s female main characters.

Clooney still looks back fondly at his time on the show. In a 2016 interview, Clooney praised The Facts Of Life star Charlotte Rae.

“You were such an incredible force in an early part of my career…. You were funny and kind and made a very young, not very skilled actor feel very much at home,” he told her, according to TODAY.

Two years before The Facts of Life, Clooney made his film debut in 1983’s Grizzly II: Revenge. He starred in the film alongside his fellow future Oscar-winner Laura Dern and actor Charlie Sheen.

However, the film was shelved at the time and wasn’t released until 2020 due to a series of production errors. The film can best be described as a campy horror flick. It likely never would have been seen had its stars not gone on to such A-list fame.

Whether you like the film or not, it’s still a fascinating watch just so see how Clooney handled his first film role.

This is an American comedy horror film that is more of a spoof than a horror movie.

“In the early 1980s, a series of gruesome murders occurred at Crippen High School,” the official film description reads.

“A few years later, a film crew uses the now-abandoned Crippen High as the set for a film,” it reads. “But an uninvited guest makes an appearance on the set.

In the movie, Clooney plays a character named Oliver, who unfortunately is quickly killed off. Even so, this was one of Clooney’s first movies, so working on it had to have been a memorable experience for him.

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In 1987, Clooney played the role of Kip Howard on a Murder, She Wrote episode that was titled “No Laughing Matter.”

In the episode, Clooney’s character was one half of a star-crossed couple, with both of them being the children of rival stand-up comics.

Clooney’s character is neither the killer nor the victim in the episode, so he likely didn’t have to do a ton of heavy lifting. He was still finding his footing as an actor at the time though, so appearing on the Angela Lansbury-led show was likely a fascinating experience.

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Months after his Murder, She Wrote appearance, Clooney guest starred on The Golden Girls as a police detective named Bobby Hopkins.

The episode features Clooney playing one of two detectives who stake out the girls’ house to investigate their neighbors, who are suspected jewel thieves.

In 2022, Clooney recalled working with the seasoned Golden Girls stars Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty, Rue McClanahan, and Betty White.

“They could get away with stuff, if those women were 30, they could’ve never said on network television,” he remembered. “But they could do anything they wanted and they would get away with it. It was so much fun.”

“That was a fun show to work on,” he added.

Long before his days starring in Oscar-winning films, Clooney had a leading role in the 1988 movie Return Of The Killer Tomatoes.

Clooney plays the character of Matt Stevens in the movie, which is a sequel to the 1978 original. In this movie, the crazy old Professor Gangreen has developed a way to make tomatoes look human for a second invasion that is meant to rival the first.

If the movie sounds absurd, that’s because it is! It’s also not one that Clooney looks back on fondly.

“As an actor, all bets are off if you need money,” he previously told Newsweek. “I’ve done really crappy movies or crappy jobs when I was broke, and people go, ‘Why did you do Return of the Killer Tomatoes?’ Because I got the job!”

Clooney starred as the character of Booker Brooks on eleven episodes of the sitcom Roseanne between 1988 and 1991.

Clooney’s character was the supervisor/foreman of Roseanne and Jackie when they worked at Wellman Plastics in seasons 1 and 4. Brooks briefly dated Jackie, played by Laurie Metcalf, but they break up after he gets fired.

Clooney was soon able to leverage the exposure he got on Roseanne into far more significant roles.

In 1991, Clooney found himself in yet another sitcom. This time, he played Joe in five episodes of the sitcom Baby Talk, which starred Tony Danza and Scott Baio.

This short-lived sitcom was about “the adventures of Baby Mickey, being raised by single mother Maggie as she starts her life over in the city.”

By this point in his career, Clooney had to have been getting tired of only getting recurring roles on television shows. Luckily for him, things were about to turn around for him in his career!

Related: George Clooney Says Matthew Perry Wasn’t Happy On ‘Friends’: ‘It Didn’t Bring Him Joy’

After years of paying his dues, Clooney was finally cast in his own show Bodies Of Evidence. In this procedural police drama, “a team of homicide detectives, led by the veteran head of the department Lt. Ben Carroll, work cases in an unnamed big city.”

Clooney played Det. Ryan Walker, a talented young detective who has a propensity to get too emotionally involved in his cases.

Unfortunately for Clooney, the series received largely negative reviews. It was canceled after one season, leaving him looking for work once again.

Clooney’s last role before he made it big on ER was that of Detective James Falconer on 19 episodes of the television show Sisters.

Clooney’s character falls in love with Sela Ward’s character, Teddy, and marries her. 

“Yes, he was my husband for a year,” Ward told Entertainment Weekly years later. “None of us wanted him to leave!”

Unfortunately for them, Clooney was indeed on to bigger and better things. Once he began starring in ER, he never looked back, and he remains a major star to this day!